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solacekames · 6 years ago

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If anyone would like a non-Tulsi-Gabbard-related explanation of what Hindutva is, why it’s fascist, and why it should not be confused with Hinduism itself:

Hindutva – Fascism, Indian Style - by Nandakishore Varma

As a student, I was attracted towards the BJP: in an aggressively secular democracy which stressed non-religiosity of the government to the extent of purposefully rejecting the common Hindu culture, fearing that it might hurt the sentiments of the minority, perhaps it was only natural. At that time, I understood Hindutva to mean the common inclusive culture of India, which was rejected by many aggressive Muslim clerics. I was upset at this, and did not want the rich literature, art and culture of our country (which is Hindu in nature) to be abandoned to favour minority sentiments.

However, as the ruling centrist-right Indian National Congress weakened, the BJP grew in power: and its cries of Hindu pride grew shriller. Riots started happening sporadically across the country. In 1992, the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, a centuries-old Muslim Mosque was destroyed by a Hindu mob, alleging that it was built by the Mughal emperor Babur on the site of a destroyed temple of the Hindu deity Rama. Atrocities against minorities increased in frequency and ultimately peaked in the mindless carnage of Gujarat in 2002. As I watched, I slowly moved away from the party which contained the Hindu fanatics responsible for this atrocities.

The writing was on the wall, however. The Indian National Congress, lacking any coherent political ideology or leadership was thrashed soundly in the recent parliamentary elections. The BJP swept to power under the man who was Chief Minister of Gujarat during the 2002 riots. For all practical purposes, the ideology of Hindutva had triumphed.

In this context, I thought I should read the slim book which is the root of it all – Hindutva by V. D. Savarkar. Understanding a fascist philosophy is the first step in defending oneself against it.

————————————————– For Savarkar, Indian civilisation starts with the arrival of the Aryans. In fact, he dismisses all those existing in the Indian subcontinent at the time of their arrival as “scattered tribes”, whose languages were the “Prakrits” (uncultured tongues) which evolved from the immigrants’ Sanskrit, which means “cultured”. He is also at pains to establish that these original inhabitants were also most probably known as Hindus because Hindu is derived from “Sindhu”, the river Indus. Thus, at the outset itself, he establishes Hindutva as tied inseparably to the land. He also makes the astonishing statement that it is certain to have predated Egypt and Babylonia!

Although it would be hazardous at the present stage of oriental research to state definitely the period when the foremost band of intrepid Aryans made it their home and lighted their first sacrificial fire on the banks of the Sindhu, the Indus, yet certain it is that long before the ancient Egyptians, and Babylonians, had built their magnificent celebration, the holy waters of the Indus were daily witnessing the lucid and curling columns of scented sacrificial smokes and the valleys resounding with the chants of Vedic hymns – the spiritual fervour that animated their souls.

Emphasis mine.

Savarkar conveniently forgets the Indus Valley civilisation which had a settled city life, apparently some kind of government, and complex art and religious belief; and which was born, thrived and perished much before the nomadic Aryans ever reached anywhere near India!

(Also, India had a rich collection of Dravidian languages which was in no way linked to Sanskrit. A language of Dravidian origin, Brahui, is still existing in modern-day Pakistan! So the claim that all the languages of India are uncultured versions of Sanskrit is offensive and silly.) Thus at the outset itself, the intention is clear – the falsification of history to create a false identity for the “Hindu” – the purposeful rejection of pluralism in favour of an identification based on a fabricated story of a mythical “fatherland”. And Savarkar says that he is treading on the “solid ground of recorded facts”!

But it is when the author veers off into areas of conjecture that the whole thing becomes seriously eccentric. He first of all sets out to discredit the Maurya civilisation as the first great Indian civilisation: for him, a great Hindu civilisation as delineated in the Hindu myths preceded it. Recorded history means nothing to Savarkar: he considers it all misreadings (at best) or outright fabrications (at worst) by the West. Rather, he considers the Buddhist era a period of decadence (!) when Hindus were totally enervated by the concept of Ahimsa which left them easy fodder for the Muslim invaders.

(For his examination of the “history” of the Hindu people, Savarkar uses dubious sources like the “Bhavishya Purana”. It seems that he accepts any text which is supportive of Vedic Brahmanism as the gospel (!) truth. Whether this is due to genuine belief or political agenda, we can only conjecture.)

Now the author goes on to establish that, in spite of all the differences of caste, creed and colour, Indians are one people – which is true and what is beneficial for the country, anyway – but then, puts the final spin on the ball when his fundamentalist agenda suddenly comes out baring its claws and teeth, casting aside its mask of patriotism. Savarkar writes:

But can we, who here are concerned with investigating into facts as they are and not as they should be, recognise these Mohammedans as Hindus? Many a Mohammedan community in Kashmir and other parts of India as well as the Christians in South India observe our caste rules to such an extent as to marry within the pale of their castes alone; yet, it is clear that though their Hindu blood is thus almost unaffected by alien adulteration, yet they cannot be called Hindus in the sense in which that term is actually understood, because we Hindus are bound together not only by the tie of love we bear to a common fatherland and by the common blood which courses through our veins and keeps our hearts throbbing and our affections warm, but also by the tie of common homage we pay to our great civilisation – our Hindu culture, which could not be better rendered than by the word Sanskriti suggestive as it is of that language, Sanskrit, which has been the chosen means of expression and preservation of that culture, of all that was best and worth preserving in the history of our race.

In short – Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains are in: Christians and Muslims out. Why? Because they don’t consider India as their “Holy-land” (Punyabhumi) in addition to their fatherland: for them, the Holy Land is Jerusalem or Mecca. So, as long as they remain tied to their Abrahamic religion which traces their origin from the Levant, they cannot be accepted as Hindus.

(Interestingly, Savarkar leaves the Jews and Farsis out of it. Jews mostly, I think, because the RSS have been supporters of Zionism since day one, and vice versa: also because Jews and Farsis were not proselytising religions so he did not perceive them as threat.)

Now Savarkar launches into his real agenda. He says that he is not criticising or lamenting, but stating a simple fact. Christians and Muslims cannot be accepted as Hindus (according him, this means Indians) unless they accept India as their Holy Land, by forswearing their allegiance to their “foreign” origins – this effectively means abandoning their religion in the current format.

————————————————-

Thus, the philosophy strikes at the roots of secularism. If India adopts “Hindutva” as its guiding principle and starts rewriting the constitution, Hinduism may not become its official religion: minorities may be allowed to practice their beliefs in private. But the nation will be governed by laws based on the principles set forth in this venomous tract. All people who do not toe the “Hindutva” line will have to live as second class citizens.

From that to the concentration camps is only a minor step.

Think I am overreacting? The events of the past two years should set every intelligent Indian thinking.

https://nandakishorevarma.wordpress.com/2016/03/07/hindutva-fascism-indian-style/

#hindutva #fascism

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insideanairport · 5 years ago

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Nietzsche’s “Thus Spake Zarathustra” (part II/II)

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Iran between Zoroaster (زرتشت) and Islam

Last Thursday night (June 20th), Trump approved an attack on Iran after a US drone was shot down, yet he suddenly changed his mind and pulled back from the attack. (5) While Trump almost attacked Iran and started a new area of war and misery in the world, Iranians inside Iran and around the world are frightened by this escalation. Today, Iran’s Jewish community is the largest in the Mideast outside Israel – and feels safe and respected. (6)

Iranians in the diaspora have a variety of ethnicities, languages, religions, and political views but with different intensities, they all share the common Iranian-something else identity. There are many different political oppositions to the current Islamic Republic which in itself is one of the most straight-forward opponents of the United States hegemony and its imperial projects. Politically, Iranian Left has a wide spectrum; from the ultra-radical MEK which is supported by no one else but John Bolton, to Tudeh Party of Iran. Iranian right-wing opposition has also a wide gamut from ultra-right nationalists such as Persian Renaissance, Jason Reza Jorjani who hangs out with American white-supremacists Richard Spencer, to the good old monarchists, and of course the recent infamous Mohamad Tawhidi a fake Muslim cleric educated in Iran who is now a hero for the white-nationalists and Islamophobes. (7) (8)

Iranian nationalists see themselves as Caucasian or white. This might be in part due to the fact that etymologically the word Iran means “land of Aryans”. The Avestan name Airiianəm vaējō "Aryan expanse", is a reference in the Zoroastrian Avesta (Vendidad, Fargard 1) to the Aryans’ mother country and one of Ahura Mazda's "sixteen perfect lands". (9) Before the Islamic Revolution of 1978, Shah of Iran was seeing himself as a descendant of the great ancient Persian kings. In 1971, Shah decided to organize a huge event on the 2500-Year Celebration of Persian Empire (officially known as the 2500th year of Foundation of Imperial State of Iran). Many historians argue that this event resulted in the Iranian Revolution and eventual replacement of the Persian monarchy with the Islamic Republic. If you fancy watching some part of the event, there is good propaganda video narrated by Orsen Welles.

Before the Shah, for a short period, Iran had a cozy democracy in 1951-1952. Iran democratically elected its 25th prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh (محمد مصدق‎), who was a supporter of secular democracy and resistance to foreign domination. He nationalized the Iranian oil for the first time in 1951. The oil industry had been built by the British on Persian lands since 1913 through the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC/AIOC -later British Petroleum and BP). Mosaddegh’s government was overthrown in a coup d'état (28 Mordad 1332) orchestrated by the United States' CIA and the United Kingdom's MI6. (10)

Nietzsche and Postmodernism

Zoroaster [Zarathustra as its older form] was the ancient Persian prophet who lived in Iran at some point between 1500 BCE - 1000 BCE. Nietzsche chose the older version of Zoroaster’s name “Zarathustra”. Before publishing the book, Nietzsche included the first paragraph of Zarathustra’s prologue in his previous book Joyous Science (1882). There are two differences between this paragraph and the opening in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. (1) The title Incipit Tragoedia [tragedy begins] and (2) in Joyous Science the lake of Zarathustra’s home is mentioned as “lake Urmi” [today’s lake Urmia] compare to the prologue in Thus Spoke Zarathustra where the name of the lake is left out. We know that the real birthplace of Zoroaster is uncertain. (11)

Nietzsche’s anti-Christian and anti-majoritarian views (it's reversals of Christian morality and values) are picked up by white feminists and queer theorists for obvious reasons. As Michael Hardt wrote in the forward for Deleuze’s "Nietzsche and Philosophy”, postmodernists didn’t just use these concepts to get away from the dominant French Philosophical establishment of ’50s and ’60s but they were also genuinely interested in Nietzsche’s anti-universalities views.

Although very similar in methodology, there are some differences between the Nietzschean concept of solitude (which is very predominant in this work) and postcolonial marginalization and anxiety. Words such as "happiness” and “joy” has a distinctive meaning for Nietzsche which wasn’t unpacked in this book but was the main topic of his previous book Joyous Science (1882). Nietzschean Dionysius is more tonal in this book rather than descriptive and maybe has giving its chair to the bigger umbrella of Eternal Return as the "fundamental conception" of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. (-Ecce Homo, 1888)

Importance of writing as an activist

“Of all that is written I love only that which is written with blood. Write with blood: and you will discover that blood is spirit. It is not easy to understand the blood of another: I hate the reading idler. He who knows the reader does nothing further for the reader. Another century of readers – and spirit itself will stink. That everyone is allowed to learn to read will in the long run ruin not only writing but thinking, too. Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it is even becoming mob[populace].”

At the end of chapter 4 in Joyous Science, Nietzsche inserted the opening of the Zarathustra’s prologue. He is making his readers ready for a transformation. For understanding Thus Spoke Zarathustra, it is essential for the reader to read Joyous Science first. Nietzsche wants to prepare his readers for his philosophy, so in a way, he is selective about who is he talking to.

“We not only want to be understood when we write, but also just as surely not to be understood. It is by no means an objection to a book that someone finds it unintelligible: perhaps this was precisely the author’s intention – perhaps he did not want to be understood by ‘just anyone’. Every individual with a distinguished intellect and sense of taste, when he wishes to communicate himself, always selects his listeners; by selecting them, he simultaneously excludes ‘the others’. All the subtler laws of style have their origin here; they simultaneously ward off, create distance and forbid ‘entrance’ (or intelligibility, as I have said) – while allowing the words to be heard by those whose sense of hearing resembles the author’s. And between ourselves, may I say that, in my own case, I do not want my ignorance or the vivacity of my temperament to prevent me from being understandable to you, my friends; certainly not the vivacity, however much it may compel me to come to grips with a thing quickly, in order to come to grips with it at all. (The Joyous Science - Book V, 381 On the Question of Intelligibility”)

Anti-Nietzsche writers

Anti-Nietzsche writers usually refer only to Nietzsche’s text from his early period (before the break with Wenger) without taking his later works into consideration. Taking his works out of context is a sign of dismissal of his philosophy and art. Nietzsche met Wagner at the home of Hermann Brockhaus an Orientalist who was married to Wagner’s sister, Ottilie. Brockhaus was himself a specialist in Sanskrit and Persian whose publications included an edition of the Vendidad Sade—a text of the Zoroastrian religion. (12) It was only after the publication of “Richard Wagner in Bayreuth” that he realized who Wagner really was (an anti-Semitic coward). After completion of “Human, All-Too-Human” (1878) and continuation of his friendship with Jewish philosopher Paul Rée, Nietzsche ends his friendship with Wagner, who comes under attack in a thinly-disguised characterization of “the artist”. (12)

“Nietzsche had long hymned the sublime power that Wagner’s music exercised over his senses but now he realised how it robbed him of his free will. The realisation filled him with a growing resentment against the delirious, befogging metaphysical seduction that once had seemed like the highest redemption of life. Now he saw Wagner as a terrible danger, and his own devotion to him as reeking of a nihilist flight from the world. He criticised Wagner for being a romantic histrionic, a spurious tyrant, a sensual manipulator. Wagner’s music had shattered his nerves and ruined his health; Wagner was surely not a composer, but a disease?”

(Sue Prideaux, “I Am Dynamite!: A Life of Nietzsche”)

To even start talking about Heidegger and Nietzschean metaphysics, is to miss-read Nietzsche, just as taking "Will To Power” as something that Nietzsche actually published is wrong. Will to Power was never meant to be a book, it was put together by Nietzsche’s Nazi sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche and Heinrich Köselitz. They have selected, added and subtracted parts to Nietzsche’s notes in order to compile a book that is accessible to their average readers. (See Will to Power introduction by R. Kevin Hill, Penguin Classics 2017). Sue Prideaux described this perfectly in Nietzsche’s biography "I Am Dynamite!: A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche”. And Carol Diethe’s wrote a biography on Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche which gives us more insight into her proto-Fascist mentality.

The Will to Power book, did everything that Nazis wanted, hugely swerving from Nietzsche’s philosophy, the book starts with "European nihilism" and ends with the forceful sentence “This world is the will to power – and nothing besides! And even you yourselves are this will to power – and nothing besides!”. No other philosophy could do better justice to the Nazi cause than this fabricated assemblage.

Majority of Nietzsche’s work can be hijacked by ultra-right and the new alt-right, expect his fundamental critic of Christianity which is at the heart of his philosophy. Fascist and racist white writers such as Jordan Peterson, Oscar Levy (who wrote the introduction to Untimely mediation in 1909 and according to Walter Kaufmann, forged a fake autobiography of Nietzsche titled “My Sister and I”), Richard Spencer and others have tried to utilize Nietzsche in their hatred of brown and black peoples, religious minorities, Muslims and Jews, Queer people, and liberals. (13)

Methodologically, Nietzsche doesn’t throw away, archaic classical concepts such as; nobility, civilization, and barbarism, he appropriates and instrumentalizes them for his philosophical end. He didn’t have everything perfect, after all, we are talking about a dude who lived his mature period 140 years ago and was using a “writing ball” to type. (14) He has comical and outdated stuff as well. His rejection of vegetarianism is one of them.

Who is living in Nietzsche’s world

It seems to me the worst thing that we can do when reading Nietzsche is to put his philosophy into a functionalist and majoritarian (national) use. He argues in Joyous Science concerning consciousness (which he perceives as a communal category rather than an individual one):

“the growth of consciousness is dangerous, and whoever lives among the most conscious Europeans even knows that it is a disease. As one might have guessed, it is not the antithesis of subject and object which concerns me here; I leave that distinction to the epistemologists who have remained entangled in the snares of grammar (the metaphysics of the people). Even less is it the antithesis of the ‘thing in itself’ and the phenomenon; for we do not ‘know’ enough to be entitled to make such a distinction. We have absolutely no organ for knowledge, for ‘truth’; we ‘know’ (or believe, or imagine) exactly as much as may be useful to us, exactly as much as promotes the interests of the human herd or species; and even what is called ‘useful’ here is ultimately only what we believe to be useful, what we imagine to be useful, but perhaps is precisely the most fatal stupidity which will some day lead to our destruction.”

Nietzsche’s critique of European Universalism and Western Humanism is still valid and timely, yet if we stay within the hegemonic “white domain“ (White-main) our theoretical understanding of Nietzsche, will be centered somewhere between the Alt-right racism, white phenomenology, European Modernist and localists, Silicon Valley accelerationism and Nick Land (which is equally racist). The only way to get out of this binary is to step out of White-main and find Nietzsche in between the lines of the second-generation non-European Nietzsche intellectuals (Fanon, Derrida, Aimé Césaire, Muhammad Iqbal, Ali Shariati) and the third-generation intellectuals (Spivak, Bhabha). At this time in history, Europeans can’t (and shouldn’t) any longer teach or perpetuate Nietzsche’s philosophy for any end. Not for Germany, not for any other white-majority nation. This is simply because they are already living in Nietzsche’s post-God reality.

Bib.

1. NIETZSCHE, FRIEDRICH and HOLLINGDALE, R. J. . Ecce Homo. s.l. : PENGUIN BOOKS, 2004. 9780141921730. 2. Sandis, Constantine. Nietzsche’s Dance With Zarathustra . philosophy now. [Online] 2012. https://philosophynow.org/issues/93/Nietzsches_Dance_With_Zarathustra. 3. Ashouri, Daryoush. Nietzsche and Persia. http://www.iranicaonline.org. [Online] July 20, 2003. http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/nietzsche-and-persia. 4. Nietzsche, Friedrich. the joyous science . s.l. : Penguin Classics, 2018. 5. Michael D. Shear, Eric Schmitt, Michael Crowley and Maggie Haberman. Strikes on Iran Approved by Trump, Then Abruptly Pulled Back. nytimes.com. [Online] June 20, 2019 . https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/20/world/middleeast/iran-us-drone.html. 6. Hjelmgaard, Kim. Iran’s Jewish community is the largest in the Mideast outside Israel – and feels safe and respected. msn. [Online] 8 29, 2018. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/iran%E2%80%99s-jewish-community-is-the-largest-in-the-mideast-outside-israel-%E2%80%93-and-feels-safe-and-respected/ss-BBMAVgX. 7. Mackey, Robert. How a Fringe Muslim Cleric From Australia Became a Hero to America’s Far Right. theintercept.com. [Online] June 25, 2019. https://theintercept.com/2019/06/25/mohamad-tawhidi-far-right/?fbclid=IwAR25hr0TV8w0erffRrGhccVkC5G0KFwjR3y7tM7n2j-4nx4pp_b5PssuFzo. 8. Schaeffer, Carol. ALT FIGHT Jason Jorjani Fancied Himself an Intellectual Leader of a White Supremacist Movement — Then It Came Crashing Down. theintercept.com. [Online] March 18 , 2018. https://theintercept.com/2018/03/18/alt-right-jason-jorjani/. 9. ĒRĀN-WĒZ . Encyclopedia Iranica. [Online] http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/eran-wez. 10. Kinzer, Stephen. All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror . s.l. : John Wiley & Sons, 2004. 11. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Joyous Science. s.l. : Penguin Calssics, 2018. 12. Wicks, Robert. Nietzsche’s Life and Works. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. [Online] 2018. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche-life-works/. 13. Illing, Sean. The alt-right is drunk on bad readings of Nietzsche. The Nazis were too. www.vox.com. [Online] Dec 30, 2018. https://www.vox.com/2017/8/17/16140846/alt-right-nietzsche-richard-spencer-nazism. 14. Herbst, Felix. Nietzsche’s Writing Ball (Video). felixherbst.de. [Online] https://vimeo.com/43124993.

(Part II/II)

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#read #reading

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